Cambridge inkjet pioneer Domino Printing Sciences is injecting $50m (£30.3m) into a new joint venture company to improve food safety and traceability technologies for the US egg industry.
Domino, which is Business Weekly’s reigning Business of the Year, has joined forces with Beverly Hills-based NewMarket Impressions – a company controlled by Yucaipa in California – for the venture. The partners plan to expand the business globally.
Domino is using cash from its own resources for a 15 per cent equity share in the new company. It will be the sole supplier of both laser and ink jet coding equipment and fluids and aftermarket services to the business.
Domino also intends to grow its existing global egg marking and coding services through this opportunity and offer its current and future customers access to NMI's groundbreaking proprietary egg safety and traceability technology.
More than six billion dozen eggs are produced in the US each year. Last year in the US more than 500 million eggs were recalled due to salmonella enteritidis disease, causing 3,578 illnesses as reported by the Center of Disease Control and Prevention.
Recent US food safety legislation imposes new requirements of US egg producers to strengthen salmonella prevention efforts. NMI has developed a comprehensive, real time end-to-end solution that will aid in SE prevention and its proliferation during the production, storage and transportation of shell eggs.
It has also developed a proprietary marking and coding system that marks certified fresh dates and trace codes onto the shells of individual eggs, enabling every egg to be identified and traced, from harvest to table and back, through its supply chain.
The NMI system can integrate with all purchase order systems and can identify shell egg product in real time at and during any point in its production, storage, transportation and consumption cycle.
Domino will provide all manufacturing services, hardware and maintenance for the new business. Domino expects the income from the trading activity with the new company to be earnings enhancing from 2012 with the potential for significant additional value from the equity shareholding in the medium term.
Domino’s group MD, Nigel Bond, said: “The simple ‘Best Before Date’ is no longer an adequate protection; today full traceability of products from source to point of consumption are increasingly required.
“In partnering with NMI I believe Domino has a unique opportunity to deliver full compliance systems and as a result to increase significantly our market share of laser and ink jet coders.
“By taking an ownership stake in the new company we will be full partners with NMI in the development and deployment of systems globally. Our first priority will be the egg industry in the US. We are excited by the opportunity and believe that over time, the returns from this investment will be significant.”
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